chen guangcheng that plunged the u.s. to a diplomatic standoff with china. the president's secret trip to afghanistan. >> the agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the afghan people. as you stand up, you will not stand alone. gwen: what it meant and what it didn't mean. today's new unemployment numbers, is the economy getting better or have job seekers given up? >> this is a sad time in america where people who want work can't find jobs. gwen: mitt romney ties up loose ends, their names, santorum, balkman and gingrich. >> i'm asked sometimes is mitt romney conservative enough. and my answer is simple, compared to barack obama? this is not a choice between mitt romney and ronald reagan. gwen: covering the week, martha raddatz of abc news, peter baker of "the new york times," david wessel of "the wall street journal" and charles babington of the associated press.

>> award-winning reporting and analysis, covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week with gwen eiffel" produced in association with "national journal." corporate funding for washington week is provided by -- >> this rock has never stood still, since 1875 we've been there for our clients through good times and bad when their needs changed we were there to meet them. through the years from insurance to investment management, from real estate to retirement solutions, we developed new ideas for the nafiial challenges ahead. this rock has never stood still. and that's one thing that will never change. prudential. >> this is the at&t network, a living, breathing intelligence bringing people together to bring new ideas to life. >> look, it's so simple. >> in here, the right minds

from inside and outside the company come together to work on an idea. adding to it from the road, improving it in the cloud, all in real time. it's the at&t network. providing new ways to work together so business works better. >> corporate funding is also provided by boeing, norfolk southern, additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. one of the week's most fascinating stories unfolded half a world away and involved the blind hero, a daring escape, alleged death threats, secret negotiations and the high profile diplomatic dance

between two tentative allies, the u.s. and china. the curious case of chen guangcheng. >> he confirmed that he and his family now want to go to the united states so he can pursue his studies. over the course of the day progress has been made to help him have the future that he wants and we will be staying in touch with him. gwen: who is chen guangcheng and how did he end up in the middle of after debate between two world superpowers. >> 2 was a whiplash week and all thought it was solved and he would stay in china by the middle of the week but by the end of the week he's going to come to the united states. let me backtrack a little bit more about chen. human rights activist, as you said, blind, so dramatic this week because he escaped, he'd been on house arrest for a

couple of years, before that he was imprisoned. he was with his wife and young daughter in this house in a rural province in china. and in the middle of the night, he certainly used his blindness because he is used to darkness and his guards weren't, he played sick for a few weeks so they weren't really looking after him that well, climbed over a wall, through a field, through a river, felt his way around and then another dissident met him and then they linked up with the u.s. embassy. a car picked them up from the u.s. embassy. from behind the scenes all this was being worked out with the embassy. he said he escaped and wanted to link up and go to the embassy. the united states was so quiet about this, as you know. the diplomats were saying nothing and wouldn't even confirm he was in the embassy until they worked this out. hillary clinton, meanwhile, is on her way for other meetings about security and the economy and they want to get this solved before she gets there.

gwen: 300 miles to beijing, no one confirming it for a couple days he's being protected at the u.s. embassy and at first we're told he doesn't want to leave china. he wants to stay and continue his work. but that changed. >> that certainly did change. you saw all these amazing pictures of him with the u.s. diplomats. assistant secretary of state kurt campbell and ambassador gary locke and the legal advisor at the state department, hugging, clutching hands with him, he looked so happy. he was going to be transferred to the hospital because he broke his foot when he climbed over the wall and he also had other health problems from years he said beatings. but he got out and got to the hospital after saying he wanted to stay in china and the u.s. saying basically he's happy to do this, he wants to do this, he has some guarantees and he got out and suddenly he was

saying he was pressured into leaving. the twitter lit up. all sorts of social media lit up saying the story of the media has is wrong. gwen: it should be said twitter lit up but not in china. >> not in china but they know how to get over the firewalls in china and there is some access to getting over the firewalls. >> the question for a couple days was what happened with secretary clinton and her people. did they misjudge or make mistakes or were they misled or was it a series of unfortunate circumstances. because it looked bad for a couple days he's calling into every media organization and house committee, saying help me. begging not to turn him over. >> i think what happened initially when he got out and into the hospital he linked up for his wife and his wife said she had been threatened, that they threatened to kill her and some say he was beaten while in the u.s. embassy. and if he was threatened and if

he didn't leave the embassy but the united states said we didn't know that, had no idea and it was obvious he wanted to get this done before hillary clinton got into town. that continued, then as you know he changed his mind again. >> why did the chinese let this guy they're kind of holding in a hospital have a cell phone to speak to a u.s. congressional hearing. i don't think stalin did that with his political prisonners. >> pretty incredible. he was talking on the phone, yet you couldn't go anywhere near him and one thing i think the diplomats didn't do is they didn't stay overnight and didn't have someone staying with him in the hospital and i think he got really spooked and nervous how this thing would go down. i did ask someone what did he think would happen to his wife while he was in the u.s. embassy in this dramatic escape. he had been beaten, he said for years prior to that, his wife included so i don't know what he thought would happen to his wife. i think part of it is fatigue. i think the diplomats were probably fatigued and i think chen was in a terrible

emotional state. so when he got out and heard those stories from his wife, i got right on that cell phone and started talking to people so he didn't take his cell phone away. they wanted him gone, let's face it. >> what does it do to the whole issue of human rights in china and the u.s. which has been an issue many years? >> certainly shines the spotlight on it but with chen in the united states he's not there to work for reform. gwen: we do think he's now headed to the united states to be a student here. >> i think it will probably happen but you never know. gwen: while the distance from beijing to kabul is 2, 600 miles, i looked it up, it can also be measured as the distance between foreign policy success or not. while the president flew out of darkness to a trip, the talk was whether he was exploiting the anniversary of osama bin laden's death for political purposes. the day after, not so much. >> as we emerged from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it's time to

renew america, an america where our children live free from fear and have the skills to claim their dreams. gwen: but was the president's dramatic visit, in and out in a little over six hours about substance or was it about symbolism? >> you add a also dose of substance, you add a little dose of symbolism and you get a recipe for the power of the incumbency. and mitt romney on the other side of the ocean is watching as the president is able to command the dialogue for five, six, straight days about his national security records starting with videotape they released boasting about the raid that killed bin laden all the way through this secret middle of the night trip to afghanistan. there is substance here and he signed the strategic treaty with president karzai and lays out the map we see as our relationship the next 12 years until 2024. planning to withdraw troops, most troops, not all troops but by the end of 2014 and turning

things over to the afghans and this is in all advance to the nato summit but a lot of symbolism. you saw pictures of the president standing there beaming from a war zone. how many times has the president addressed the united states public from a war zone live -- gwen: never. >> right. 4:00 in the morning in kabul, not a lot of afghans watching. gwen: he gave 10 purple hearts and addressed the troops and got a lot done in a little bit of time. >> exactly. >> what does it tell you because he was in darkness and also there's still almost three years left of the troops. president obama keeps talking about winding down, winding down but they're not really close to that yet. >> that's right. it's an interesting straddle between hawk and dove here for this president. one day he's boasting about killing america's number one enemy and the next he's talking about pulling out troops but also staying there a long time. he's trying to in effect have it both ways by telling the americans look, we have a way to get out, we're going to end this thing and tell the afghans we're not leaving altogether and don't think you the taliban can take advantage of the fact

we're going to leave in a couple years. >> do the republicans have any strategy for coping with this? he got bin laden, he's delivering on his promise to wind down. >> is it even possible to have a political advantage with an incumbent president? >> very hard for a party out of power to take on a president who has air force i and the pictures of all those military vehicles behind him. >> do they have an alternative plan for afghanistan? >> not really. there is some debate. they know they don't like the withdrawal deadline and thinks it sends a signal to the enemy and all they think is wait us out and we'll leave. but now they think it's america's longest running war and you saw the republican response the last few days and this week in which they initially complained of president obama talking about the bin laden raid but then by the time he landed in afghanistan raid they thought it's not a win or lose issue but let's appreciate what happened here and move on to the economy which they think is better territory. >> is it a coincidence the same week we get the first look at the bin laden papers that were

picked up before he was killed a full year ago, why did it happen, when did it happen? >> even the white house didn't try to pretend that was a coincidence. everybody is interested in the anniversary so we decided it was a good time to put -- there are interesting things in the documents. there are 175 pages of letters bin laden had written or written to him and talk a little bit about what he was like in the final days and months and even years in hiding in pakistan but the political impact again is to draw out the story one more day. who is the one that got bin laden? who got him again? president obama. it's all leading up to the saturday's official kickoff of his re-election campaign. no accident there. gwen: remind people why it wasn't creating heightened drama look, i'm in afghanistan. they've been on these war zone trips and there's in fact a reason for it. >> the papers show you this. in his hide away he ordered it,

or general petrais if it could be carried out if he ever came to afghanistan. they have real reasons to be afraid of security and in fact, president obama landed in darkness, they rushed to get done before dawn, before light came and within an hour and a half of his departure there was a suicide bomb attack in kabul and taliban claimed to send a signal to the president. gwen: it's probably unfair to ask you to brief us on this. but the plan for this document was hamid karzai, is he a partner we can work with at this point? >> not an easy answer. happened to hit him at a good moment when the ambassador talked about whether he was on his meds or not. he was happy to have the partnership agreement signed and we were not angry about each other with issues of the koran and other terrible pictures. gwen: there were more mixed messages on the economy, unemployment is down but only slightly. the number of people who have given up even looking for work has increased but consider these numbers as well, since

the president took office in 2009, the unemployment rate has risen .3% from 7.8% to 8.1% we heard today. meanwhile, the number of private sector jobs has grown a bit by 35,000 and the number of government jobs has shrunk, down a whopping 607,000. what are we to read into all these numbers, david? >> i think it gives you a picture of an economy which is healing but at a painfully slow rate. the jobs numbers looks like this. in january and february we had pretty good numbers, more than 250,000 jobs a month. then in march and april we have lousy job numbers, less than 150,000 jobs a month. so there's two explanations. one is that there was warm weather and maybe some of the economic activity was pulled forward into january and february and now we're settling back into a normal pattern. the other and somewhat more frightening thing is what if the economy was, as has done in past years, started the year strong and then started to paper -- taper off? the stock market had a lousy day today and they suggest it's

more than just a weather fluctuation. the point you make of unemployment is really important. the unemployment rate fell because so many people dropped out of the job market. gwen: how can that be good news? >> it's not good news. there are, as a percentage, fewer men working or looking for work, that's the definition of being in the job market at any time since 1949. when the congressional budget office a few years ago projected what the work force would this be year they said it would be five millor more people looking for work than there actually are. this is the wrong way to get unemployment down. i think the political situation is obvious. the worst the economy, the better it is for mitt romney. so mitt romney did the predictable thing and said these are terrible numbers. he said we seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. and president obama did the predictable thing which says, look, when i came to the office the economy was sinking and if you measure it from the bottom we created four million jobs since the bottom -- gwen: almost replaced all the

jobs we lost. >> almost replaced all the private sector jobs we lost. huge layoffs in state and local governments. the third year where we started off the year with fairly robust growth in jobs and then by spring got down to the same mediocre numbers. why is that? is that now a new pattern we have to live with or does it mean we haven't gotten out of recovery in a meaningful way? >> it means we don't have a recovery going in a meaningful way. part of the problem may just be when they adjust the numbers they're distorted but you have to remember in the past couple years something unexpected has happened in the spring. there was the japanese earthquake and then there was -- europe decided to do its semiannual blow itself up exercise. and then of course last summer there was the debt ceiling debacle. one view is the economy is trying to get going again but something always comes to knock it off and the other view is there's some weird seasonal pattern we don't under. >> what about the housing market, david? >> the housing market is bumping along the bottom which after all this time, housing prices down 30% is not good but

it's not getting worse. one result of this slightly worse news about the economy is that mortgage rates are falling again. you can now get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage to 3.8%. those are levels we haven't seen in decades. in ordinary times people would refinance and get things going again but the system is broken, so clogged it's not happening again. >> you mentioned europe. what's going on? u.k. is in another double dip recession and how does it affect what's going on here or does it? >> it does because we live in a global economy and part of the game plan, we're supposed to export our way out of the mess and the rest of the world is doing worse than we are. you're right, the u.k. is in double dip. the rest of southern europe is 25% unemployment. australia which has been one of the stars of the world economy has run into a little trouble. china is slowing down. so it would be a really good time for the u.s. engine to get

going again but doesn't seem to be happening. gwen: these jobs we lost, the jobs that seemed to have disappeared somehow, do they ever come back or have we davegly turned the corner in a different place which we have to get used to assessing a shrunken economy? >> i think we'll get back, some day get back to full employment. the jobs will be different. we see, for instance, the good news in manufacturing. some manufacturing jobs are coming back. manufacturing is one of the sectors that's adding jobs but it's going to be a long time before we feel like everybody who wants to have a job has one. gwen: ok. well, thank you on that. you always cheer me right up. not exactly. on to politics. if you happen to live in new york, california or utah, if you don't make big campaign contributions don't expect to see a lot of presidential campaigning this year. but if you were, say, an independent working class voter living in ohio, florida, or any about a dozen other swing states, expect to hear a lot from barack obama and mitt

romney. consider the commonwealth of virginia. candidate obama kicks off his official campaign there this weekend but president obama just so happened to be there today. >> my message to congress is going to be just saying no to ideas that will create new jobs is not an option. there's too much at stake for us not to all be rowing in the same direction. gwen: but mitt romney is seeding no ground on the old dominion. he was there yesterday. >> but he'll blame congress and a.t.m. machines perhaps and the tsunami and have all sorts of things. he'll talk about -- that have resulted in the fact a guy who promised he'd keep unemployment below 8% has not been under 8% since. gwen: mitt romney was in virginia yesterday and was saying president obama was wrong on this idea about the economy, was wrong in what he was saying to virginia voters, obviously. so -- >> the very fact romney is having to devote so much time and attention to virginia and will continue is a problem for

mitt romney because this is a state that barack obama won in 2008, it had not been won in a presidential level by republicans since 1964. even north carolina had voted for jimmy carter, virginia did not. so for years and years, decades really, virginia was seen as a solid republican state. barack obama changed that when he also won north carolina and indiana. for mitt romney to win the presidency he almost surely has to win virginia. if he doesn't win virginia he has bigger, bigger problems. you mentioned ohio and florida. they're the states we always expect to be in the fight but if you lose a state that for years had been in the republican column, you started behind. gwen: we've seen poll this is week in all three of those states, what does it look like? >> "the washington post" had a poll today which showed barack obama with a lead in virginia. it's very early but still, things that have been happening in virginia are problematic or at least worrisome for romney

and the republicans. obama did so well, there's a growing hispanic population there and hispanics are going to play crucial roles in other swing states and where he did so well was in the washington suburbs of virginia where there's a lot of college educated people, mobile people, and these are increasingly are turning a little more democratic. so romney has to worry about that type of electorate in other states, the raleigh durham area of north carolina and that sort of thing. >> we saw the endorsement, if you will, of newt gingrich and also had michele bachmann endorsing him and friends like these you might wonder. what do those mean at this point and what about rick santorum? >> rick santorum hasn't gone all the way with endorsements. endorsements, if any of them refuse to endorse that would be the bigger story. there were very tepid -- extremely tepid. gwen: you think we can take him off the running mate list? >> we could have done that before. there's a big question, a question about enthusiasm on

both sides. you know, barack obama definitely has some concerns about enthusiasm among young people who were so important in 2008. there is concerns in the republican party about the enthusiasm of the conservative base, you know, the conservatives never have seen mitt romney as their guy. and it doesn't help that, you know, santorum and gingrich aren't a little more enthusiastic. at the end of the day, they'll probably -- they're going to vote, the vast majority of them, because they don't want obama. >> is this going to be all about the economy? i know at one point, peter said it's about foreign policy this week but what's it going to be about in these states? >> both parties very much believe that overwhelmingly would be about the economy and jobs. it doesn't mean other things won't be talked about. but at the end of the day, that is by far the biggest issue. you've got to remember, we think of these campaigns as big national campaigns but really there's only a handful of states, maybe a dozen at the most and in those states you're only looking at the number of

truly persuadeable voters that swing independent. there's not that many. you're focusing on those types of voters and they tend not to be ideological. they tend to look for -- you know what i'm saying. >> bread and butter. >> that works. >> what he said. >> but isn't it true when you ask about foreign policy the polls show the president has an enormous advantage. gwen: do people vote on that and can you swing them over to talk about that? that's the problem. >> if you're romney and want a shot at obama, it has to be the economy, right? >> yes. where he might talk about foreign policy is, again, where it's like fundraising, again a probably true believers. he does talk about israel quite a bit with jewish groups and evangelical christian groups but i don't think you'll see these persuadeable voters we're talking about, they won't cast their vote. gwen: the president spending his weekend in ohio and virginia and that mitt romney gets to ohio on monday. >> ohio and pennsylvania and florida. we'll see these guys over and

over and over. gwen: at least you can get your hotel reservations. thank you, everybody. follow "washington week" online for campaign coverage over the weekend at all these events all next week. while you're out there, find out what our panelists are reporting in the essential read section at our website at pbs.org/washingtonweek. keep track of daily developments with me on air and online at the pbs newshour and we'll see you next week on "washington week." good night. >> funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we know why we're here. to chart a greener path in the air and in our factories. >> to find cleaner, more

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(♪ opening music: "as time goes by"♪ )

judith: is that you, mum? yes. ah. well, dressed like that it had better be. you worked late. a lot to catch up on. you're always working late. well, i got into the habit. there was ever much to come home to. well, thanks. well, when you were married, i mean. which time? both times. have you eaten? no. want me to whip us up something? that offer lacked conviction. we'll eat out. right. i'll get dressed. what's that? oh, it's a manuscript of lionel's book. he's finished the revisions. i thought he must still be working on that. i didn't see sandy in the office today. no, gave her the day off to recover from working with him. is he difficult to work for?

bloody impossible, according to sandy. i always thought age mellowed. huh! you wait till you've aged. here we go! judith: did he ask you to read it? no. i had a copy run-off. ahh! what do you mean "aah?' you want to know what he was doing all those years you lost touch. oh, well, all right, i do. it's called nostalgia. no, it's called nosiness. (doorbell rings) i'll get that. no, not like that you won't. oh! hello lionel. i'm going to norwich. well, have a good trip. not immediately. uh, uh, the day after tomorrow oh, why are you telling me? oh, i didn't want you to think i'd just disappeared. again. again, huh. well....